An Ol' Broad's Ramblings

Archive for 30 July 2009

Since the Mr and I had been here back in 2002, we thought it might be nice to take Ick and Short Person on a drive this afternoon. After an amazing lunch at The Shed in Ocean Springs,

some of the better bbq we’ve had, but contrary to some folks opinion, not THE best…but darn close, we headed west down U.S. 90, to see what wasn’t here anymore. The answer turned out to be…..A LOT!

We had visited Beauvoir on our previous visit, and were quite impressed. We also read that Katrina had totally trashed the place. Honestly, we didn’t expect to see it standing, but I’ll be darned, there it was, so we pulled in to take a tour since Ick and SP had never seen it. There was some balking by the males of our party, but afterward, they were both glad us girls insisted. If you want history about the refurbishment, go read it. It’s quite impressive how much they were able to do over a 13 month period of time. What really annoyed me, was it wasn’t Americans who donated their time and efforts to restore a piece of American history, it was a team from Great Britain.

I wasn’t able to take any pictures inside, because my phone does an auto flash thingy, and I’ve yet to figure out how to turn it off. Ick’s camera bit the dust, so he didn’t get any either. But here are a couple from outside:

A picture of the pictures that were taken a few days after Katrina:

At one time, there were more buildings on the property. Right now, there are a couple of replicas of the buildings that once dotted the area. One is a replica of the library….

There was this….pully looking thing attached to what appeared to be a bell. Everyone kept walking off and leaving me, so I didn’t really get a good look at it…..

After leaving Beauvoir, we took a drive towards Gulfport. I remember a whole slew of beautiful old homes. What I saw was a lot of very empty lots for sale, and one Waffle House sign, with no Waffle House attached. It was quite depressing, but things have been cleaned up pretty well. I know there is a lot more work to do, but the residents we’ve spoken to are quite proud of their “bounce back”. Can’t say as I blame them. There’s a lot of new buildings, and more going up. One thing I must say, other than the half destroyed buildings, it seems to be a lot cleaner than I remember it.

Tomorrow we’ll head home, but ya know….I’ve no doubt, we’ll be coming back in the not too distant future!

I was standing there, looking out the window at this view – look to the left, ya get the gulf, but straight down is what use to be a parking lot.

No, it’s not a terribly attractive view, but it got me to thinking. No, didn’t get a headache this time.

I have no idea what those parking lots were attached to….obviously whatever it was, isn’t there anymore….one more victim of Katrina. But y’know, it says something. It says that nature will ALWAYS make a come back. We can rebuild things, but only nature will take care of it’s own. We don’t have ANY control over nature what so ever! I wonder when folks will finally get the picture? Well, with the moonbats blabbing about “climate change” and other ridiculous blather, probably never. I wonder when man decided he (she) had so much power as to control nature? Look at a forest after a devastating fire! It may take a while, but that sucker grows back without any intervention from people!

The Cartel is a new documentary film that should be seen by everyone who cares whether children in this country get a good education. It should especially be seen by anybody who thinks that merely shoveling more money into the schools will make them better.

The Cartel reveals the story behind the story of educational failure in the United States: Teachers unions are special interest groups, and, just like any special interest group, the unions exert a disproportionate influence on the public policies that most affect their members. Candidates for school boards must play nice with the unions, if not play the role of outright stooge; if they don’t, they’ll find themselves opposed by a block of very motivated voters. The teachers can thus select the people with whom they must negotiate their contracts; and teachers unions don’t want contracts that reward the best teachers and that allow bad teachers to be fired.

It’s no secret I’m no fan of unions. Yeah, they had their uses at one point in history, but that time is long gone. We now have laws that protect employees, and do not need a gang of thugs running companies out of business by more and more demands of ‘cradle to grave’. Just look at the auto industry, run into the ground by a feckless union leadership to the point they are now Gubmint Motors, etc.

One of the worst however is the teacher’s unions. Oh, sure, some folks seem to think without their teacher’s unions, kids wouldn’t be taught at all. Horse manure! Kids were a LOT better educated before the unions got a hold of public education. They are no longer schools. They are libtard indoctrination centers. I often wonder if the reason fast food restaurants now have pictures on their cash registers is because the average fast food employee can’t even read, or figure out how to put numbers in little boxes, or if they even are able to recognize numbers?

Now this was really cool! After everything was totally trashed during Katrina, out of the blue, they found this guitar floating in the Gulf.

The story: This was probably the coolest item in the collection, based on its back story. When Katrina hit Mississippi it destroyed the Hard Rock Casino, along with pretty much everything in its path. This guitar was in the original casino, and was thought to have been lost. This guitar was found in the gulf months after Katrina hit, and returned to be placed back in the collection. The guitar is still in pretty good shape considering what it has been through. Even more impressive Dimebag’s signature is still in tact.

Now, I’ll be honest, I have NO idea who Dimebag is, or was, or whatever, but I’m extremely impressed it was found.